World Jewish Congress President Ronald Lauder speaks to members of the media at the Malmo International Forum on Holocaust Remembrance and Combating Antisemitism in Malmo, Sweden, Oct. 13, 2021. Photo: Jonas Ekstromer/TT News Agency/via REUTERS

Billionaire Ronald Lauder, a major financial backer of the University of Pennsylvania, has threatened to pull his funding from the school unless it does more to fight antisemitism.

The Algemeiner obtained a letter that Lauder, president of the World Jewish Congress, wrote on Monday to University of Pennsylvania President Elizabeth Magill, explaining that her refusing last month to cancel an anti-Zionist festival hosted by the university that featured activists who promoted antisemitic conspiracies and called for violence against Israel has forced him to reevaluate being a donor to the school.

“I know the conference has put a deep stain on Penn’s reputation that will take a long time to repair,” Lauder wrote. “You are forcing me to reexamine my financial support absent satisfactory measures to address antisemitism at the university.”

Addressing Magill as “Liz,” he added, “You should know that this letter is written with the greatest sorrow … sorrow I never expected to encounter at Penn and one I don’t think I will ever get over. I’m sorry you did not cancel the event.”

The “Palestine Writes Literature Festival,” which was held last month, was sponsored by the school’s Wolf Humanities Center, as well as its Department of Cinema and Media Studies. Middle East experts and nonprofit leaders previously described the event to The Algemeiner as an “Israel hate fest.”

Among the speakers was City University of New York (CUNY) Graduate Center professor Marc Lamont Hill, a former associate of Louis Farrakhan who has accused Israeli police of training American officers to kill Black people.

Another speaker listed on the festival’s itinerary, Palestinian researcher Salman Abu Sitta, previously said during an interview that “Jews were hated in Europe because they played a role in the destruction of the economy in some of the countries, so they would hate them.”

Roger Waters, the former Pink Floyd frontman, was also a scheduled speaker. Last month, a new documentary revealed fellow musicians detailing Waters’ long record of anti-Jewish barbs. In one instance, a former colleague recalled Waters at a restaurant yelling at the wait staff to “take away the Jew food.”

The festival itinerary included a host of other speakers who have praised terrorism against Israel and spoken out against Zionism.

The event’s executive director, Susan Abulhawa, has accused Israel of committing “a dozen kristallnachts [sic],” referring to the infamous pogrom carried out against Jews in Nazi Germany in November 1938.

After Hamas murdered over 200 young people attending a music festival in Israel earlier this month, Abulhawa appeared to justify Hamas’ massacre on her Facebook page, criticizing Israel of “moral depravity” in its treatment of Palestinians.

The Lauder family’s philanthropic support for the University of Pennsylvania goes back four decades. In 1983, Ronald and his brother Leonard founded the school’s Joseph H. Lauder Institute of Management & International Studies — named after their father — where graduate students can earn both a Wharton School master’s of business administration and a master’s in international studies.

The institute was mentioned in Monday’s letter, with Lauder saying that its students “will now be tainted by their school’s new reputation.”

On Sunday, one week after the Palestinian terror group Hamas invaded Israel and massacred over 1,400 Israelis, Magill expressed regret for not promptly condemning the festival.

“Many have voiced their anger and frustration about this event. Please know that I hear you,” Magill said in a statement. “I know how painful the presence of these speakers on Penn’s campus was for the Jewish community, especially during the holiest time of the Jewish year, and at a university deeply proud of its long history of being a welcoming place for Jewish people. The university did not, and emphatically does not, endorse these speakers or their views. While we did communicate, we should have moved faster to share our position strongly and more broadly with the Penn community.”

This academic year, the university has seen an abnormal spike in antisemitic activity on campus. One day before “Palestine Writes” took place, an unidentified male walked into the university’s Hillel building behind a staffer and shouted “F—k the Jews” and “Jesus Christ is king!” before overturning tables, podium stands, and chairs, according to students and school officials who spoke with The Algemeiner.

Days earlier, just before the Jewish New Year of Rosh Hashanah, a giant swastika was graffitied in the basement of the university’s Stuart Weitzman School of Design.

Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.